Legal Question in Criminal Law in Michigan

Re: invalid warrant for blood

Chemical tests (breath, blood or urine tests) in OUIL cases require quick testing. As time goes by, evidence is destroyed because your body works the alcohol out of your system. Delay hurts justice, because the longer the delay, the less the result proves what your blood alcohol content was when you were driving. Police know that and try to avoid delays.

You do not have a constitutional right to hold up the testing by saying "I have to talk to my lawyer first". What if that took hours (not unusual if the arrest was in the wee hours of the morning)? By the time you talked to your lawyer (maybe 9 am?), your BAC would be irrelevant. If you delay your "will I take the test" decision, the police can interpret that as a refusal, and get a search warrant for a blood sample. The issue of whether you actually refused is more relevant to whether you should lose your driving privileges for 6 months (implied consent suspension), than re: admissibility of the blood test.

The warrant does not, in my experience, specify which facility should withdraw the blood. It commands the cop to get the sample, and it's up to the cop to go to an appropriate medical facility. If you were at Hospital X when the warrant was obtained, it might say that that's where you were located then and there, but it doesn't mandate that Hospital X take the blood.

I doubt that you'd prevail on a civil suit, as you described. The "fact" is that the cop had a search warrant. Whether she read it doesn't subject her to your $1,000,000 lawsuit.

Re: invalid warrant for blood

A warrant to take blood is required if you did not consent to the "search." In most cases the warrants are upheld as valid even if there are mistakes. From my experience, a motion to suppress the warrant can be filed but will probably be denied. You could have had blood taken from a hospital of your choice.

As for the law suit agains the hospital. It would probably be dismissed unless you can show that the hospital somewhere was grossly negligent or intentionally drew blood (battery) without your consent.

Your bigger concern right now should be dealing with the alochol offense.

Sanford A. Schulman, Esq. 1-800-529-7747